Optimism For The Brders Railway To Hawick
This article in the Southern Reporter is entitled New Hope For Railway Extension.
It describes how politicians are getting together to extend the Borders Railway to Hawick. This was said.
In a speech in Edinburgh on Monday, Scottish Secretary David Mundell pledged to work with the Scottish Government on connecting the Borders with the national rail network to the south, saying it was a “realistic prospect”.
He said: “Scotland needs good transport links to thrive.”
It is my view, that the railway was not fully thought out in the first place.
The big thing that was missed was the Overground effect!
This was demonstrated so well here in London, when the transforming of the North and East London Lines from a set of travelling scrapyard-ready urinals into a modern railway, brought so many new passengers out of the woodwork, that trains soon became overcrowded and more and longer trains had to be ordered. Last week, it was announced that there will be more late trains, which I wrote about in The London Overground Grows Without Fuss.
The Overground just keeps on growing, so why won’t the Borders Railway?
My friends in the Borders tell me the trains don’t have enough capacity and there is not enough parking at Tweedbank. Anybody working on or living by the London Overground could have told the good people of the Borders this would happen.
The solution is probably to extend to a Galashiels-style transport interchange at Hawick, stop at Melrose and the Borders Hospital and procure some new four-car trains to work the line.
I also believe strongly, that Bombardier and Network Rail by the use of some intelligent design could enable the line to be served by Aventra IPEMUs, that would avoid the need to have electrification gantries marching all over the hills.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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